Who was the spy Cicero

A. He was valet to the British ambassador in Ankara, and he sold top-secret documents to German agents in the Second World War. Why do you ask < xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Q. I've just heard he could have been unmasked earlier, but for a British intelligence foul-up

A. That's it. Cicero's real name was Elyesa Bazna, a former convict. The case inspired the 1952 film Five Fingers, starring James Mason as the treacherous manservant.

Q. So how has all this flared up again

A. It has just been revealed how British intelligence could have caught him. In 1943, a German bureaucrat called Fritz Kolbe crossed into Switzerland with a number of top-secret Nazi documents taped to his body. He was shown to the office of Colonel Henry Cartwright, the military attach.

Q. Who welcomed him with open arms

A. Wrong. He thought he was a fake. 'Sir, you take me for an utter fool,' the colonel uttered. 'I know you are sent as a plant to get me into trouble. I do not deal with cads.'

Q. So Cartwright was an utter fool

A. Yes. Kolbe, an official at the Nazi foreign ministry in Berlin, turned to the Americans. And he turned out to be an almost perfect spy. The boxes of American files holding the bulk of Kolbe's cables ' codenamed the Boston series ' have now been revealed under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.

Q. How good was his intelligence

A. First-rate and up-to-date. British cryptographers operating a stolen Enigma code-breaking machine were astounded that secret Nazi documents they had spent weeks decoding had already been handed to the Americans by Kolbe.

Q. And where does Cicero come in

A. Kolbe's most sensational coup was to reveal to the Americans ' and through them to the British ' that the Nazi spy was working the British embassy in Ankara. It emerged after the war that the valet to ambassador Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen had photographed secret documents on the ambassador's desk while his master played the piano at diplomatic soiroes.

Q. What did he find out

A. It's still a matter of debate about what secrets Cicero stole. The rumour that they included the Allies' plans for the D-Day Normandy invasion has been denied, but there is evidence that the codename, Overlord, was mentioned. However, all the information that Cicero was relaying to his Nazi paymasters was being copied by Kolbe and smuggled to the Americans.

Q. So did Kolbe get found out by the Nazis

A. No, but it didn't do him much good. He died in 1970. Many Germans thought of him as a traitor.

Q. And it was death by firing squad for Cicero

A. No. But he died desperate and in misery, having been double-crossed by the Nazis. He was said to be one of the highest-paid spies of the Second World War, but the Germans repaid his treachery with counterfeit British banknotes.

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By Steve Cunningham